In the belt conveyors known before now, the conveyor belt slides on a running rail formed as a running support. The running rail is a smooth plate made of, for example, stainless steel, which is optionally coated with an interchangeable wearing surface made of plastic. Nevertheless, it is not possible to avoid the occurrence of a thermal load on the belt body or the conveyor belt due to the sliding friction that necessarily occurs, whereby this thermal load contributes to more rapid wear of these parts on the one hand and also takes up a substantial portion of the driving energy on the other.
Roller conveyors are already known in which the goods to be conveyed run directly on the driven rollers instead of on a belt. The quiet running of these roller conveyors is very restricted, however. These roller conveyors are furthermore only suitable for use with dimensionally larger objects.
A conveyor belt is also known from WO 03/101865 that is put together in the form of a link chain comprising a multiplicity of links, whereby each of these links has a plurality of rollers that are arranged end-to-end in the direction of travel and in rows spaced apart from one another at a right angle to the direction of travel. The links of a link chain are connected to one another by means of joints. The rollers, in turn, run on flat plates, so that no sideward drifting, along with the associated sliding friction, can occur.